


The Ballad of Campus Accomodation Shaw

by Jwash



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Don't Steal From The Fae, Gen, Other, Wild Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10343688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jwash/pseuds/Jwash
Summary: "Don't Steal From The Gentry" was a rule so obvious that no one at Elsewhere University had ever thought to write it down, or even pass on to freshers. In this case, this seems to have been an oversight, as two students flee across the campus, stolen goods in hand. Perhaps help will come from an unexpected source, but then again, perhaps it won't...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Ballad of Minepit Shaw, first posted on elsewhereuniversity.tumblr.com. Thanks to @charminglyantiquated for inventing this madcap uni and letting us play around with it.

The bellow of a brass hunting horn broke the chilly night air, echoed by the baying of hounds as Suzie and Kath sprinted across the building site waste ground in front of Pelham house. Suzie held her high heels in one hand, and a bottle of vodka which was not hers in the other, while Kath had dropped her shoes a few metres back, and clutched two bottles of what she had assumed were fancy coloured spirits. They shifted in their bottles against rhythm of Kath’s run.

“Fucking Pelham house!” Kath panted. “Party flats my arse!”

“Of course he’s a fucking Gent!” Suzie groaned in exasperation. “Of course he is!”

Neither of them risked a look behind them, but they both swore they heard thundering hooves and slobbering hounds. In their panic, they had made a bee-line for the muddy expanse where builders were already sinking the piles for the new Shaw House accomodation. Kath spotted a large bulldozer and grabbed Suzie’s shoulder, pulling her towards it. They ducked under it’s backhoe and pressed themselves against the shadows behind it.

They stood there holding their breath, hearing pad of paws against soft earth drawing closer. Suzie muttered and mumbled what sounded like prayers, fiddling in her purse for a packet of salt, or a bolt, or some little iron trinket. Kath leaned towards the edge of the bulldozer, about to risk a glance around, when a hand clamped on to her shoulder.

She was too startled to scream, but Suzie wasn’t, letting out a short, sharp squeak of terror. A man stood before them, dressed exactly like a campus security guard, except for the fact that every inch of clothing on his body was green. He wore a green cap, green shirt, green slacks, green boots, forest green hi-vis, even his maglite cast a pale green light over the two girls.

“Goodness, you’re in a mess aren’t you?” he said, almost off-hand, as though commenting on the weather.

Suzie looked fit to scream again, but Kath spoke first.

“Please, you have to help us. There’s a guy out there hunting us!” she said, her voice almost cracking with fear, both real and exaggerated.

“Sounds like Lord Pelham,” the green guard said with a little grimace. “A powerful lad and no mistake. Getting suspended would be the least of your troubles. You must’ve done something pretty bad to rile him like this.”

Kath frowned, shifting the bottles awkwardly in her hands.

“Well, okay. We did something pretty stupid. But please, we’ll do anything.”

Suzie shot Kath an appalled look, and Kath sighed.

“Alright, I’ll do anything.”

The green guard smiled without showing his teeth.

“Lucky for you I’m no friend of Lord Pelham. Although, it would certainly be nice to have some kind of recompense for my magnanimity….”

Suzie (a Biomed student) frowned, but Kath did Literature. She laid her bottles on the ground, and nodded for Suzie to do the same.

“Well, I’d say that’s an ample gift. Step this way.”

Kath and Suzie stepped forward, and plunged into absolute darkness. Kath felt her hip bump into something hard, like a metal table edge.

“Ugh!” Suzie said, somewhere nearby. “What’s this?”

“Just my little home. You’ll pardon me keeping it dark, but power bills are atrocious for my thousand crystal chandeliers,” came the voice of the green guard.

Suzie felt along the table edge and hopped up on to it, sitting on the edge.

“Not much in the way of furniture,” she said, shifting uncomfortably.

“I apologise,” came the guard’s voice. “I’ll admit that solid gold furniture inlaid with precious stones tends to be a little hard on the backside. I’ve only arrived recently, and haven’t had time to unload my thousand silk cushions.”

Suzie and Kath were silent for a moment. Kath ran her hand over the tabletop, feeling little lumps and bumps across its surface.

“It can’t really be gold, can it?” came Suzie’s voice.

“Even if it isn’t,” said the guard, “you’re a long way away from Lord Pelham, aren’t you?”

Kath didn’t respond. She supposed she owed him that much. She lay down on the table and closed her eyes, for all the difference it made in the dark.

When light came, it was harsh and hard. A bright autumnal morning dawned across the campus, bringing a cold breeze that blew across Kath’s sleeveless arms. She leaned up and looked around, and saw where she was. Then she let out a laugh.

She and Suzie had tumbled in the night and fallen into one of the pilings for Shaw House. She’d spent the night lying at the bottom of a muddy hole on a half-buried I-beam, and she could already feel the bruises where its rivets had dug into her. Suzie roused herself beside her, mumbling darkly about a headache.

At the top of the piling pit, a human head in a hard hat shouted down to them.

“Oh thank God!” it said. “I thought you were dead!”

“No!” Kath shouted up, smiling. “Although my friend may wish she was.”

* * *

It wasn’t until later that Kath got back to her room. On her desk was a note dotted with rhinestones and written in glittery green gel-pen.

It simply read, “Whether he was a security guard or a Gentleman, remember: ‘there’s more things told than are true, and more things true than are told’.”

At the bottom it had been signed by a ‘Lord Shaw’, in long looping handwriting.


End file.
